"There's something quietly radical about sitting in a recycled Adirondack chair while you're waiting for your flight at the world's busiest airport. Plastic Reimagined transforms locally sourced plastic waste into full-scale seating prototypes, bridging design education, material research, and civic infrastructure at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and honestly, I can't stop thinking about how clever this is. Here's what happened."
"Designer: Hyojin Kwon (curator and instructor) Graduate students collected post-consumer HDPE and PLA from campus makerspaces, waste collection streams, and local recycling facilities. Think about that for a second. The plastic cups from the student union, 3D printing scraps from late-night projects, all that everyday campus detritus that usually ends up in a landfill. Instead of being tossed, the materials were shredded, pressed into sheets, milled with CNC routers, or cast into volumetric forms."
Plastic Reimagined turns campus post-consumer HDPE and PLA into full-scale seating prototypes installed at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Graduate students collected plastic from makerspaces, campus waste streams, and recycling facilities, then processed it by shredding, pressing into sheets, milling with CNC routers, and casting into volumetric forms. Surface variations and marbled color patterns were retained so the recycled origin remains visible and becomes an aesthetic feature. Prototypes include Adirondack chairs and collective seating elements that function as civic infrastructure while serving as material research and design-education outcomes. The work was exhibited at Atlanta Contemporary and shown publicly during SITE 2025.
Read at Yanko Design - Modern Industrial Design News
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